Flag Captain (22 page)

Bolitho pushed towards the windows and stared with amazement at the leading boat which seconds before had made such a picture of grace and purpose. The massive thirty-two-pound ball must have ploughed right amongst one bank of oars, for many appeared missing, and beneath the pall of smoke he could see the slim hull broaching to, the remaining bank of oars hacking and slashing at the water in a wild attempt to hold it steady.

Meheux roared, “Stop your vent! Sponge out!” To Bolitho he shouted, “Double-shotted this time, sir?”

“If you can be quick, Mr Meheux! Bolitho's ears were still cringing from the explosion, but he could feel his sudden desperate excitement rising to match the lieutenant's as he added, “And grape for good measure if you have any!”

To the seamen who worked so eagerly in the shattered cabin the gun was as familiar as those which shared their daily lives. The strain and tension of waiting helplessly and watching the enemy shoot into the battered hull without being able to hit back was past in an instant. Yelling and whooping they rammed home the charges, watched closely by McEwen, who was too experienced a gun-captain to allow anything to alter his sense of vigilance. He even fondled each ball before allowing it to be rammed into the muzzle, making quite sure it was as perfect as could be hoped for in a Spanish ship.

Bolitho saw the damaged chebeck begin to edge painfully towards the starboard quarter and managed not to watch the seamen frantically trying to reload before she was gone from view. But a Long Nine normally had a crew of fifteen men to attend to its needs. Meheux had half that number.

“Run out!” He had done it in two minutes.

The other two chebecks were reversing their swoops and backing away from the
Navarra
's sudden challenge. One of them fired, but the shot must have passed well clear for none of them saw where it fell.

Meheux yelled hoarsely, “Left traverse!” He dashed to the side of the cabin, squinting his eyes as he tried to gauge the enemy's speed.

Bolitho heard more crashes and shouts from the upper deck and said, “I must leave you.”

Meheux did not even hear him. “Left, left,
left!
” He snatched up a handspike and threw his own weight to the gun. He was still peering and squinting over the breech as Bolitho tore himself away and ran back to the poop.

He had just reached the sunlight again when Meheux fired. As he ran to the starboard side he saw the double-shot smash into the chebeck's hull, watched with fixed fascination as the narrow deck began to tilt over, the packed mass of figures surging towards the shattered side like sheep stampeding down a steep hill. The two massive balls must have smashed the hull close on the water-line. The strain and impetus of the oars would have done the rest. Even now the hull was settling down, the milling figures of her crew spilling over the gunwale or running in confusion towards the bows. Neither of the other chebecks was making any attempt to draw near to save life or pursue the attack, and he wondered momentarily whether the stricken boat contained their leader.

He felt Grindle tugging his arm. “One of 'em's turnin', sir! She's comin' straight for the bows!”

Bolitho stared along the deck and saw a chebeck's slim masts bearing down at full speed, her furled sails appearing to be within feet of the
Navarra
's jib boom. At the last possible moment it changed course and swept purposefully towards the ship's larboard bow, the oars swinging back against her hull like some great seabird folding its wings as it glided in for a closer embrace.

Bolitho yelled, “Larboard battery!
Fire!
”

As Ashton staggered along the line of guns each one lurched inboard, the smoke billowing across the enemy craft, the balls doing little damage but cut her foremast in two like a young sapling under an axe.

Bolitho felt the grinding shudder, saw grapnels thudding over the gangway, and dragged out his sword.

“Repel boarders!” He saw the Frenchman snatch up his pistols and push some of the dazed seamen towards the side. “Mr Ashton! The swivel gun!”

He saw Allday charging along the deck towards him, his cutlass already drawn and shining dully in the smokey sunlight.

He snapped, “I told you to stay with Mr Ashton!” But knew it was useless. Allday would never leave his side in a fight, no matter what he said.

Heads were already coming up and over the bulwark, which having no boarding nets was protected only by its gangway. Bolitho watched the seamen hacking and slashing with pikes and cutlasses alike, heard the yells and cries rising to a deafening crescendo as more and more dark-skinned attackers fought their way up the ship's side. Some were already on the forecastle, only to vanish like blown paper as the swivel gun belched fire and swept them away in a hail of canister.

“Jesus! Watch your back, Captain!” Allday swung his cutlass and hacked a turbaned figure across the face, cutting the jaw away before even a scream could escape.

Bolitho saw a bearded giant wielding an axe cut down two Spanish seamen and then run crazily towards one of the hatch-ways. He thought of the women and children, the terrified wounded, and what could change any spark of hope into a raging defeat if this giant got amongst them. Before Allday could intervene he was across the hatch, one foot on the coaming, as the onrushing man skidded to a halt, the axe poised above his head, still bloody from its earlier victims.

The axe started to descend and Bolitho leapt to one side, his sword darting under the man's massive forearm, swinging him round above the hatch, his teeth bared in agony as the razor-edged blade grated against and between his ribs. Bellowing and roaring like a wounded beast he still came on, the axe making a silver arc as he slashed at Bolitho, forcing him back and back towards the poop. A seaman charged forward with a boarding pike, but the giant knocked it to one side and brought the axe across the man's neck without even losing its precision, sending the man flailing across the deck, his head almost severed from his body.

Bolitho knew that if he was pinned against the poop the other man would cut him down just as easily.

He braced himself, and as the man raised the axe above his head, seemingly oblivious to the terrible wound left by the sword, he darted forward, the blade pointed straight for his bearded throat. But his shoe slipped on a patch of blood, and before he could recover he felt himself falling hard against one of the guns, the sword clattering from his hand and beyond his reach.

In those split seconds he saw everything like one great painting, the faces and expressions standing out as if fixed in the mind of an artist. Allday, too far away to help, parrying with a redturbaned pirate. Grindle and some seamen grappling wildly below the larboard gangway, sword-blades flashing and ringing, eyes wide with ferocity and terror.

He saw too the man with the axe, pausing, balancing on his great bared toes as if to measure this final blow. He was actually grinning, savouring the moment.

Bolitho did not hear the shot through all the other awful sounds, but saw his attacker tilt forward, his expression changing to one of complete astonishment and then a mask of agony before he pitched forward at his feet.

Witrand's pistol was still smoking as he lowered it from his forearm and yelled, “Are you 'urt, Capitaine?”

Bolitho groped for his sword and stood up, shaking his head. “No, but thank you.” He grinned. “I think that we are winning this fight!”

It was true. Already the boarders were retreating along the gangway, leaving their dead and wounded to be trampled underfoot as the battle swayed back and forth above the deck.

Bolitho pushed past several yelling Spaniards and stood beside Allday, his sword parrying a scimitar and opening the shoulder of its owner in a long scarlet gash. Allday watched the man reel towards the side and slashed him down with his heavy cutlass, gasping, “That'll speed him on his way, by God!”

Bolitho wiped his streaming face and peered down into the boat alongside. Already it was being poled clear, and he could see some of the boarders leaping back on to its narrow side deck, beneath which the hidden oarsmen were trying to free their blades from the
Navarra
's side.

Several muskets were banging from below, and he felt a ball rasp against the rail by his fingers, and saw a red-robed figure pointing him out to some marksmen on the chebeck's slender poop.

But the oars were gaining control, and as the drumbeat rose above the yelling Spanish seamen, the screaming wounded and those of her own crew who were floundering in the water, the chebeck began to move down the ship's side.

Bolitho noticed that her consort was some mile distant, and must have stayed out of range for the whole fight.

He thought of Meheux in the cabin and shouted hoarsely, “I must tell them to use the gun!”

He turned to run aft and almost fell across a sprawled corpse, its face glaring fixedly at the lifeless sails and one hand still grasping a bloodied sword. It was Grindle, the master's mate, his grey wisps of hair giving the impression that it was somehow managing to stay alive without him.

Bolitho said, “Take him, Allday.”

Allday sheathed his cutlass and watched Bolitho hurrying away. To the dead master's mate he said wearily, “You were too old for this kind of thing, my friend.” Then he dragged him carefully into the shade of the bulwark, leaving a smeared trail of blood behind him.

Meheux managed to get one more shot into the enemy before the power of their oars carried them safely out of range. The chebeck which had so daringly boarded the
Navarra
had dropped almost three cables astern when Meheux was satisfied enough to fire. The ball smashed the other vessel on the poop, carrying away the small lateen mizzen and ripping through the carved scroll-work before plunging into the sea in a welter of spray.

The leading chebeck had sunk, leaving only a few pieces of flotsam and corpses as evidence. The rest made off to the south as fast as their oars could drive them, while the
Navarra
's dazed and bleeding defenders stared after them, still unable to accept their own survival.

Bolitho returned to the poop, his legs heavy, his sword arm throbbing as if from a wound.

The Spanish seamen were already heaving the enemy's corpses overboard, to bob alongside in a macabre dance before they drifted away like so many discarded rag dolls. There were no prisoners, for the enraged Spanish were in no mood to give quarter.

Bolitho said to Meheux, “They'll not attack us again today, I'm thinking. We had best get the wounded below. Then I will inspect the damage to the hull before it gets dark.”

He looked round, trying to free his mind from the dragging aftermath of battle.

“Where's Pareja?”

Allday called, “He took a musket ball in the chest, Captain. I tried to keep him from showing himself!” He sighed. “But he said that you would expect him to help. To keep the crew's spirits up.” He gave a sad smile. “He did too. Funny little fellow.”

“Is he dead?” Bolitho recalled Pareja's eagerness, his pathetic subservience in his wife's presence.

“If not, Captain, then it will soon be so.” Allday ran his fingers through his thick hair. “I had him put below with the rest.”

Witrand crossed the blood-spattered deck and asked calmly, “Those pirates will return, Capitaine?” He glanced round at the limping wounded and the exhausted, lolling survivors. “And what then?”

“We will fight again, m'sieu.”

Witrand eyed him thoughtfully. “You saved this hulk, Capitaine. I am pleased I was here to see it.” He pursed his lips. “And tomorrow, who knows, eh? What ship will come and discover us, I wonder?”

Bolitho swayed and then said tightly, “If we are met by one of your frigates, m'sieu, I will surrender the ship. There would be no point in letting these people suffer any more.” He added quietly, “But until that time, m'sieu, this ship, like her flag is mine.”

Witrand watched him go and shook his head.
“Stupefiant!”
was all he said.

Bolitho ducked his head beneath the low deck beams and looked gravely at the untidy lines of wounded. Most of them lay quite still, but as the ship yawed sluggishly and the lanterns spiralled from the deckhead it seemed as if every shape was writhing in agony, condemning him for their suffering.

The air was foul with a stench of cooking oil and blood, of bilge and vomit, and he had to steel himself before he could continue on his way. Allday was holding a lantern in front of him, so that some of the faces of the injured and wounded leapt into focus as he passed, only to fade into darkness again, their pain and despair mercifully hidden.

Bolitho wondered how many times he had witnessed sights like these. Men crying and weeping for forgiveness. Others demanding assurances that they were not really dying. That by some miracle they would live to see daylight. Here, the language and intonation were different, but all else the same. He could recall the time as a frightened midshipman aboard the
Manxman,
an eighty-gun ship-of-the-line, seeing men fall and die for the first time and watching their agony after the fight was finished. He could remember being ashamed, disgusted with himself for feeling nothing but an overwhelming joy and relief at being whole and spared the agonies of the surgeon's saw and knife.